Literary Tarot: A magician, a monk, a mystic

new vision is required

As my trust in the process of gathering three readings grows, I have started to notice the corners and shreds of things where the ideas are “hidden” for me to find through the day. I am more attentive to them, assembling and listening. Today a theme emerged.

A bit long, but so worthwhile and it names an aspect of kundalini practice that deserves naming.

“A friend of mine, the philosopher and magician David Abram, used to be the house magician at Alice’s Restaurant in Massachusetts (made famous by the Arlo Guthrie song). Every night he passed around the tables; coins walked through his fingers, reappeared exactly where they shouldn’t, disappeared again, divided in two, vanished into nothing.

One evening, two customers returned to the restaurant shortly after leaving and pulled David aside, looking troubled. When they left the restaurant, they said, the sky had appeared shockingly blue and the clouds large and vivid. Had he put something in their drinks? As the weeks went by, it continued to happen - customers returned to say the traffic had seemed louder than it was before, the streetlights brighter, the patterns on the sidewalk more fascinating, the rain more refreshing. The magic tricks were changing the way people experienced the world.

David explained to me why he thought this happened. Our perceptions work in large part by expectation. It takes less cognitive effort to make sense of the world using preconceived images updated with a small amount of new sensory information than to constantly form entirely new perceptions from scratch. It is our preconceptions that create the blind spots in which magicians do their world. By attrition, coin tricks loosen the grip of our expectations about the way hands and coins work. Eventually, they loosen the grip of our expectations on our perceptions more generally. On leaving the restaurant, the sky looked different because the diners saw the sky as it was there and then, rather than as they expected it to be. Tricked out of our expectations, we fall back on our senses. What’s astonishing is the gulf between what we expect to find and what we find when we actually look.” - Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Lives

And then there was this:

“For things to reveal themselves we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.” - Thich Nhat Hahn,  Being Peace

I am at a crossroads - no. Not true.

I am at the start of a new chapter. In these three readings I feel reminded not to look for what I think is there. To open myself more fully to the moment at hand, the life at hand, my life at hand and no one else’s, and to see what I’ve been prepared for with no preconception of topic, scale, or outcome.

There is trepidation here. And of course, the third arrives as I consider this:

“The call of expansion is stronger than my doubts and it will burn my doubts to ashes.” - Rumi

Any doubt now is entirely a thing of habit and conditioning. I feel a clarion call to see with clear eyes what lies ahead. And I know I am not alone in looking, doubting, and fortifying my clairvoyance with today’s readings.

I am grateful there is a practice for this. Onward. Inward. Through.

Vision by Kazim Kyanara